Cinescondite and Yahoo have debuted the first trailer for the upcoming sci-fi/action film Automata, featuring Antonio Banderas and looking very much like the lovechild (in style and story) of Blade Runner and District 9.

The film takes place "fifty years into the future," where Earth is reverting into a desert after its natural resources have been all but depleted. With the human population rapidly decreasing in number, a powerful corporation manufactures humanoid robots to help maintain what's left of civilization and order; employing specialist "insurance agents" like Jacq Vaucan (Banderas) to investigate reports of robot malfunctions - chiefly violations of the security protocols implemented to keep robots submissive to humans. During one such investigation, Vaucan encounters a community of robots who claim to have become sentient, along with a conspiracy that threatens man and machine alike.

Despite the similar themes, the film does not appear to be affiliated with the Penny Arcade comic of the same name. The film is the big-time debut of Spain's Gabe Ibanez, who previously directed the thriller Hierro with Elena Anaya.

I really enjoyed the Penny Arcade comic of the same name, especially the rain effects they used on the last few boxes. It's a shame that isn't being made into a movie but this one looks pretty freaking sweet regardless.

Don't worry "depletion of natural resources" is something that won't occur in near future or distant futureWe might run of carbohydrates, but there are supplement technologies already available.For energy we will rely on fission (breeder thorium/uranium reactors can supply us with all the electricity we will need, for a VERY long time)For carbohydrate raw materials we can always develop cellulose-related technologies (various grasses on land and algae on water)

Worst what can happen if carbohydrates become scarce is slight life level drop until our culture adapts and widely implements substitutes.

Looks great.I hope they'll manage to just tell a story, rather than simply using a setting to shove some enviromentalist/political/social message down our throats.Most Sci-Fi nowadays makes me depressed, because instead of addressing interesting philosophical concepts, or telling interesting stories with real characters, they just use stereotypes to say how much humans suck, how great humans are, how our planet is dying, how terrorism and corruption is everywhere, how capitalism does... something, war crimes, revenge, and all this crap.Why can't we just get a spark of reasonable optimism.

Also, "Jacq Vaucan". How literate. Someone took an entry-level class in science fiction and heard about Jacques de Vaucanson, the inventor of automatons. His most famous creation is probably the Duck - which is, essentially, a mechanical duck created in order to reproduce the digestive system on a primitive level.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a French dude who was raised by Jesuits created a pooping machine.

Could prove interesting, especially the vision of 'self-improvement as an expression of self-awareness.' Of course, the public at large could simply cling onto an easier, vastly more simplistic explanation and miss the entire point of the bloody film, i.e Transcendence (No, RIFT, the government, the blonde best friend, and Morgan Freeman are NOT the protagonists of the film, they certainly do NOT hold the moral high ground. How a film that paints Skynet as virtual Jesus can be decried as 'anti-technology' is almost painfully absurd. Dear, sweet, God, people! Just because one side has Morgan Freeman does not make it the de facto hero, as difficult as overcoming both that amazing voice and the ever-present magical negro trope may be. Does no one remember wanted?!)

I'm not a perfect scholar of "the maths"... but if it is now 2014, how does the year 2044 translate as "fifty years into the future?" /rhetoricalquestion o.OOtherwise... yeah this looks like it could be a far better telling of the I, Robot story in a different setting.

I wonder if Melanie Griffith is going to play Antonio's Estranged Love Interest/Ex-Wife in the story. Which would make things...awkward, depending on how the scenes play out.

I can see it pretty easily too, the one clip of her seems to suggest her character is a specialist in the field of robotics, and they probably broke up because he couldn't understand her fascination/love with robots, and she couldn't stand his capacity to go out and hunt/kill them.

EnigmaticSevens:Just because one side has Morgan Freeman does not make it the de facto hero, as difficult as overcoming both that amazing voice and the ever-present magical negro trope may be. Does no one remember wanted?!)

"Shoot THIS mother fucker..." Pepperidge farm remembers.

I think the fault rests with Transcendence thinking it was smarter and more clever than it was in playing on the "the audience will instantly think tech is bad, and then we'll pull the rug out from under them" idea than it really was. As weird as this may sound, I think "Lucy" did the "knowledge isn't the enemy. Ignorance is" theme a lot better than Transcendence did. And it starred Morgan Freeman as well. I'm seeing a theme here.

EnigmaticSevens:Just because one side has Morgan Freeman does not make it the de facto hero, as difficult as overcoming both that amazing voice and the ever-present magical negro trope may be. Does no one remember wanted?!)

"Shoot THIS mother fucker..." Pepperidge farm remembers.

I think the fault rests with Transcendence thinking it was smarter and more clever than it was in playing on the "the audience will instantly think tech is bad, and then we'll pull the rug out from under them" idea than it really was. As weird as this may sound, I think "Lucy" did the "knowledge isn't the enemy. Ignorance is" theme a lot better than Transcendence did. And it starred Morgan Freeman as well. I'm seeing a theme here.

Hopefully this movie can...transcend...those pitfalls.

I would agree with you about Lucy, except for the fact that they got SO much science wrong in Lucy, that it showed a clear sign of ignorance, or at the very least a lack of giving a shit about being correct.

tdylan:I think the fault rests with Transcendence thinking it was smarter and more clever than it was in playing on the "the audience will instantly think tech is bad, and then we'll pull the rug out from under them" idea than it really was,

And yet people bit that freaking lure so hard they snapped the goddamn line! Listen to MovieBob's review and then read the comments section.... There's something so reactionary in the responses to that film that people cite the fuckers whose response to 'bad tech' was to slaughter a dozen scientists within the first 15 minutes of the film as the protagonists. I never found Transendence's display too pretentious, or for that matter, even all that clever (Hell, it's no Ajami or Cloud Atlas, what with mandela pattern narratives), it's just really good at apparently poking a very irrational, reptillian part of the human brain and making normally clever people momentarily but profoundly dense.

Rounded head with static eyes....sigh. Why can't robotics go into more realistic designs for futuristic sci-fi movies? Recalling the robots used in Elysium, they had square boxed heads, antenna, hydraulics, wires, a fully realistic looking set up (even if their movements were not).

I understand that when full robotics is achieved that they -the corporations in control of it all- will want to get a friendly public opinion by designing them similar to the human aesthetic, but not to the detriment of realistic design.